As promised, here’s the second part of this morning’s 3-part series devoted to new songs I’ve just heard that qualify as fucking good pancake.

I came across this song in a typically randomized fashion. I know you’re dying to learn how that happened, and so I will tell you, because I don’t want you to die, because, y’know, your death would reduce our readership and site traffic, and that would reduce our advertising revenue from zero to some kind of negative number. Since we don’t advertise, I wonder who I would have to pay if you died?

Where was I? Oh yeah, how I came across this song. Well, I included a UK band called Anterior in this morning’s installment of MORE 2011 SICKNESS. I saw a news blurb about the band’s forthcoming album, and their name rang a bell with me — though I wasn’t sure why it did — and so I added it to that list of forthcoming albums. One of our readers, jeimssi, added a comment to the effect that it was the first time jeimssi had seen anyone writing about Anterior anywhere, and that caused me to think harder about how I knew this band and why I had lost track of them.

I have only one Anterior song on my iPod, and I can’t remember why it’s there. It’s called “Days of Deliverance”. While listening to that song for the first time in many moons, I did some net-snooping to find out more about what Anterior has been up to — and came across a squib from Metal Blade Europe from a bit earlier this morning announcing that Anterior had just premiered the second single from the new album. My machinelike mind, working at the speed of light, deduced that Anterior must have also released a first song from the album.

So, I tracked down both songs. The one that premiered today is called “Blood in the Throne Room” — and fuck, did it light me up from the first few notes. It’s a blistering, headlong gallop of melodeath pancake goodness, with a crazy-good guitar solo whipped into the batter. Listen after the jump (you’ll find a stream of the first song from the new album after the jump, too.)Continue reading »

July is behind us, and the last month of the summer has begun. Drifting along even more stupidly than usual, I let the first day of the month come and go without posting our usual monthly installment of METAL IN THE FORGE. So, we’re late with this, but I have a feeling no one was holding their breath waiting for it anyway.

You know the drill: In these posts, we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — this isn’t a cumulative list. If we found out about a new album before July, we wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. And feel free to tell us about how we fucked up by omitting releases that you’re stoked about.Continue reading »

We’re now almost two months into 2010, and it’s already time for our second update to the list of forthcoming new albums we posted on January 1. (See the original list here and the first update here.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases that we didn’t know about on January 1 or at the time of our last update about a month ago — and there’s a lot of them.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources over the last month about forthcoming new releases:

1349: “Prosthetic Records will release the brand new album from Norwegian black metal legends 1349 in North America via an agreement with Indie Recordings. The new CD, which promises ‘a return to the band’s more traditional, raw-yet-technical black metal sound,’ is due on April 13. In support of the yet-to-be-titled record, 1349 will embark on a North American tour in April and May as the support act for CANNIBAL CORPSE (alongside SKELETONWITCH and LECHEROUS NOCTURNE).”

ABACABB: “ABACABB are currently out on the road headlining the Hot Dice On Black Ice Tour featuring Upon A Burning Body!. The tour just hit Texas and will be in California this weekend. Following the tour ABACABB will enter the studio with producer Will Putney at Machine Shop in New Jersey and will have a new album to be released sometime this summer.”

AEON: “Swedish death metallers AEON have set Path Of Fire as the title of their third album, due later in the year via Metal Blade Records. The CD was recorded in September 2009 at Empire Studio in Östersund, Sweden and was mixed the following month at Mana Recording Studios in St, Petersburg, Florida by Erik Rutan (HATE ETERNAL, MORBID ANGEL, CANNIBAL CORPSE). The mastering was handled by Alan Douches at West West Side Music (CONVERGE, HATEBREED, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN) in New Windsor, New York.”

AMORPHIS: “AMORPHIS will release its first-ever live DVD, Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes, in early June via Nuclear Blast, in time for the band’s 20th anniversary. The filming took place on November 20, 2009 at Club Teatria in Oulu, Finland, where AMORPHIS was supported by STRATOVARIUS and BEFORE THE DAWN. In addition to the full-length live show, the anniversary DVD will include plenty of bonus material documenting the band’s impressive career.” (much more after the jump . . . )Continue reading »